The Liquor Question. 



147 



particularly with the evils, if they be evils, of intemperance as they 

 exist at the present time. 



Statistics and the facts of history furnish undoubted proof that very 

 much of that which injuriously affects the public health, the public 

 morals and the well-being of society can be traced to the immoderate 

 use of intoxicants, certainly as an "exciting cause" and active agent. 

 The present condition of the human family is the realization of all 

 the good and bad of the ages past. While the liquor traffic has played 

 an important part in producing the equilibrium of rights and duties as 

 they exist at the present time in connection with organized society, it 

 is but one of the many factors entering into the problem of human 

 progress. Words can never describe how much this traffic has inter- 

 fered with home-life, its peace, its comforts, its happiness, nor will 

 statistics disclose how great a factor this habit has been in all ages in 

 bringing want and poverty upon its numberless victims, making them 

 burdens upon society; nor the numerous contributions it has made to 

 the criminal classes, and those who are indifferent aud opposed to 

 the well-being of society; nor how far it has crippled and lowered the 

 standard of public virtue and morals; nor to what extent it has 

 operated to undermine the health and shorten the lives of its many 

 victims, and those who, by the inexorable law of heredity, are made 

 to suffer from its effects in one way or another even to the third and 

 fourth generation. It will be sufficient for my purpose to assume as 

 established what every well-informed person is cognizant of, that the 

 inordinate use of intoxicants affects more generally and seriously the 

 public health, the public morals and the well-being of society than any 

 other active agent with which society has to deal. 



Does the liquor traffic then present a case for the intervention of 

 the State ? Necessarily we must consider fundamentals. Broadly 

 put, governments are instituted to protect and secure the just 

 rights of all, to secure happiness and promote the general welfare. 

 Anything that by encouragement or repression aims at or secures 

 those objects is within the province of government. Ours is a gov- 

 eminent of the people, where every man is a part of sovereignty, 

 founded upon the idea that men are capable of governing them- 

 selves, which means liberty of thought and action in the broadest 

 sense compatible with public safety and the well-being of society. 

 Necessarily every member of organized society as it exists here, in 

 order that he may enjoy the greatest liberty himself, agrees to sur- 

 render so much of his own individual freedom of thought and action 

 as may be necessary to secure the enjoyment of the same rights on 



